Chapter 13: I'll Bring You Flowers In The Pouring Rain

In which I pay tribute to Herbie Flowers, and share a mixtape featuring a few floral favourites.

Good day, Dubstackers! I’m back already because this one was supposed to be chapter 12, but tech issues and life in general got in the way. I’m mainly telling you this so you don’t get confused on this sunny Saturday afternoon when you start reading the wet and muddy ramble below which I started writing a couple of weeks back on a miserable mid-week morning, so, here you go…

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Good mourning. I am writing this as I drip-dry from a sodden school-run in a biblical downpour which conjured unwelcome memories of being forced to sprint through a stretch of stream during an especially brutal cross-country run, unleashed on my PE class by our sadistic teacher who was still rocking a mullet well into the autumn of 1990.

Now let’s skip back about four decades, to Tiffin Boys School in Kingston Upon Thames, where another rain-shy kid by the name of Brian Flowers was searching for a ticket out of the miserable tradition of the cross-country run when he stumbled into a music class where a Mr Spriggs told him “pick an instrument and you can join the school band.” Young Flowers grabbed a Tuba and began honking away with gusto, and thus began his journey from brass band to studio bassist and onto the unlikely accolade of supplying the (dual) bass line(s) on A Tribe Called Quest’s international smash ‘Can I Kick It’ in October 1990, around the time I was risking trench-foot during PE.

Flowers with the same tuba he first played in Mr Spriggs’ music class

This wasn’t Flowers’ first time at the top of the pop charts, of course. I doubt I need to tell you that the ‘Can I Kick It’ loop was lifted from Lou Reed’s ‘Walk On The Wild Side’ which reached the UK top ten back in ‘73, and prior to that he’d spent 3 weeks at number 1, having written the maddeningly catchy ‘Grandad’ for Dad’s Army star Clive Dunn who, despite his memories of “penny farthings on the street”, was only 50 at the time of its release in 1970.

It was a previous brush with the pop charts, however, which mapped out Flowers’ curious career path. Having adopted the name Herbie because “a Brian Flowers wouldn’t have made it in the music business”, the bassist got a call from producer Gus Dudgeon to play on Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’. “He booked me because I had a stupid name” Herbie mused, “he said ‘with a name like Herbie Flowers, we’ve got to be in with a shot here.’”

On June 20th, 1969, Flowers joined Pentangle’s drummer Terry Cox and a young keyboardist fresh out of college called Rick Wakeman to back up Bowie at Trident studios in Soho. Mick Wayne from Junior’s Eyes added electric guitar, and the single was released 3 weeks later to cash in on the Apollo moon landing on July 20th, with UK tv co-opting the song for the news coverage. The boy who couldn’t bare the thought of a cross-country run was now soundtracking space exploration with his soon-to-be signature fret-slides.

Flowers performing live with Bowie & Marc Bolan on the latter’s tv show Marc in 77

Since that fateful day 55 years ago, Flowers has notched up bass credits on hundreds of recordings for everyone from David Essex to Alexis Korner, not to mention at least three Beatles and two Johns (Elton and Olivia Newton). A versatile bassist who straddled genres, Flowers played on soul, funk, folk, jazz, rock and pop, but it’s probably via collaborations with his contemporaries from the world of library music where he was most prolific.

If you stray from the path of Flowers’ pop recordings you’ll find a menagerie of wild jazz-rock and funk-fuelled studio sessions under names like Hungry Wolf, Blue Mink and Frog. Often you’ll spot his fellow studio session gang in the credits such as guitarist Alan Parker, saxophonist Harold McNair, and drummer Tony Carr, with John Cameron on arrangement duties, a favourite of which is a 7” by the aforementioned Frog who Cameron assembled in 1973 to record the soundtrack to Psychomania which is arguably the greatest biker gang/zombie movie ever made… in Walton-on-Thames.

It’s this side of Flowers’ back catalogue which I’ve focussed on for my latest mixtape which my full subscribers can play/download below. Jazz-rock and funky freak-outs are all accounted for, but there’s also a splash of spacious library sessions, and of course Bowie puts in an appearance, with the mix bookended by Lou Reed (‘Andy’s Chest’ is an all time favourite). The link follows the track list...

My condolences to Herbie’s family. I hope there are no cross-country runs in heaven.

DJ Wrongtom - Don’t Talk To Me About Herbie

1. Lou Reed - Andy’s Chest (RCA)

2. H. Flowers & B. Morgan - Light Six (KPM)

3. Hardin/York - Candlelight - (Bell)

4. Blue Mink - Gidda Wadda Wobble (Phillips)

5. Frog - Witch Hunt (Jam)

6. Rumplestiltskin - Can’t You Feel It (Bellaphon)

7. Ugly Custard - Feel This (Kaleidoscope)

8. (excerpt from) Herbie Flowers - Don’t Take My Bass Away (EMI)

9. Johnny Harris - Give Peace A Chance (Warner Bros)

10. James Clarke - Airport People (KPM)

11. Sounds Nice - Flying (Parlophone)

12. Ginger Baker & Friends - The Winner (Mountain)

13. Patricia Paay - Love Where Are You Now (EMI)

14. CCS - I Want You Back (RAK)

15. John L Watson - Might As Well Be Gone (Deram)

16. David Bowie - 1984 (RCA)

17. H. Flowers & B. Morgan - Movement One (KPM)

18. Brian Bennett - Soul Mission (Columbia)

19. H. Flowers & B. Morgan - Activity One (KPM)

20. Lou Reed - Walk On The Wild Side (RCA)